Wet Gold
by my paper teeth
Summary: She looks so awful, she looks beautiful. There's no fireworks, no claps of thunder or a sudden elated pounding in his chest. It hits him with the pace and care of an accelerated bus. And so suddenly he's in love. But she's not / Cat & Andre


**I edited this to give me some peace of mind, and to also hopefully give it a little more fluidity.**

_Blue Monday passed and I've been feeling pretty shite lately. I think everybody been feeling like that though. A woman threw herself off the top floor of our shopping centre on Monday. Which was really, really not nice at all._

_I was bored as fuck, so poodled onto fanfiction and found the delightful 'with you right here, i'm a rocketeer' written by omggcece. Which I highly, deeply and utterly recommend. I read it and was like, 'right that's it, I'm converted; lead me to the Candre wagon!' So maybe after reading this, there might be a few more passengers? Ignore my wagon metaphor; I'm going slowly insane._

_I own nothing_

.

.

Continental drift was a prime example. A prime example of that cosmic assurance. The mantle will move no matter what. The 200km of liquid rock will, slowly bit by bit, carry the crust onwards and outwards. And they will move indefinitely, centimetre over centimetre, to drift and away and towards their new constructions.

He'd always thought he'd fall for Tori. It was just something that would happen. One day he'd catch her eye and fall in love, he'd fall down that spiral hole that so many try to pursue.

Tori, the girl who shone, the girl who had a heart of gold, the girl he had so many reasons to love but just couldn't find one he believed in. He was so sure he'd begin to love Tori one day.

But he never expected this - this mirrored cosmic assurance, to be completely and utterly wrong.

.

It happened quite simply over a dead fox.

The sodden creature lay discarded in the rain slick road, a few small fateful steps away from the sanctuary of the pavement. Its blood had run rivulets over the tarmac, soaking into the dark grains, leaving a few tiny pink puddles. The rain had kept the birds from swooping in to claim their soggy meal, but the falling moisture had in no way discouraged the small redhead.

He found her there; sitting next to the fox, in the middle of the road just beside the bus shelter, her hair like sticky tendrils upon her face, inky tracts tracing her tears. Her rosy tipped fingers pawed at the matted tail and he couldn't be sure if her face was soaked with rain or a different salty liquid.

She turned round to look up at him, and the image of the dead fox flashed before his eyes. The wet, red hair and large, woeful eyes.

She looked so awful she looked beautiful.

There and then it smacked him right in the middle of the chest. But there were no fireworks, no claps of thunder or a sudden elated pounding in his chest. It hit him with the pace and care of an accelerated bus.

And so, just like the fox, he was suddenly knocked completely out of his mind. But unlike the fox, this time it was by a girl, and not a speeding bus.

So just as continental drift occurs, centimetre over centimetre, Andre's affection too, drifts from one girl to another.

.

It was raining. As it always should do in times of desperate depravity. The heavens open their arms, and a watery onslaught soon follows; battering the tarmac road into a saturated submission.

The sheets of rain cools his longing to be outside, and he finds himself tracing notes in the misty condensation of his window.

A figure appears; quite suddenly, emerging from the gathering fog.

It's a girl. It's his girl. As he wishes he could call her. And she's barefooted and rotating. Her arms are held out, and he can just about see how her wiggling fingers are splayed out, waving to the heavens.

Her skirt sticks to her legs like a second skin and her hair is plastered to her flushed skull.

Since the incident with the fox, he's mulled over in his mind the thousands upon thousands of different situations his affections could lead him to. In the end he decides to switch his brain off and just not think. Because when he thinks, he thinks of dead foxes and dancing broccoli and rotating princesses and how he so desperately needs to switch off again.

But this girl, this tiny, shivering, drenched girl who's dancing her feet red raw, keeps pulling him back, again and again.

.

She looks up and he knows she's seen him. Her mouth puckers and she blows an innocent imaginary kiss, and then she's gone, rotating, until an hour later, the downpour finally ends.

.

He's at her house with everyone else but Tori. It was Cat's idea to make the girl a cake, and only with the promise of icing and frosting does she entice the others to join her.

When they get there, everything's already laid out on the plywood counter, neat little bowls of flour, butter and eggs.

Chaos ensues and they all dive straight in, flour pounded into the carpet underfoot.

Andre notes how her eye light up and glimmer as the slick mixture of liquid cake begins to form, and for a split second he wishes he could take a picture of the pure delight chasing across her face. She catches his eye and flashing that unbridled cheek-to-cheek beaming smile of hers, and he thinks he might have turned in a puddle of cake batter. He would if he could just make her smile like that.

'Oh my gosh, can we please put a Barbie in the cake. One that looks like Tori? And – and the cake can be her dress!'

She looks up at him with those wide pleading eyes and clutches at his arm, squeezing the yes out of him.

'Why'd you want a Barbie in a cake, that's just plain weird,' Jade pipes up from Beck's embrace in the corner of the small kitchen.

'Cause then you get to eat all the cake off the Barbie and keep it afterwards. I had it for my ninth birthday.'

Jade chuckled dryly at that.

'So basically you're admitting, that at age nine, under the pretence of cake, you performed illicit lesbian actions on a plastic doll?'

'Jade!' Cat squeals, a little cloud of flour appears from her waving hands.

'What? She basically licked out a Barbie for cake! Am I the only on who noticing this? And now Cat's trying to make Tori do the very same thing.'

André stands up to her rescue, 'Shut it Jade, we all know you wish you could lick out a Barbie.'

Jade just pouts then, with a quick flick of her tongue and a harsh 'Gladly.'

.

Cat eventually, after retrieving all of her old Barbies, most of which have been viciously mauled by a younger Jade, finds in her brothers room, a Shelby Marx action figure and supposes it will do.

Andre quickly leaves the room before Cat can ask him what kind of frosting skirt will go with a pink sports bra. Robbie is rather resigned to that fate, and Andre leaves the two in the messy kitchen.

He needs air. He knows that the smell of vanilla isn't coming from the cake, and her constant giggling is making him woozy.

He finds Beck and Jade in the garden encased in a cloud of smoke and whispers. He instructs them to go back inside, and they do so begrudgingly, and Beck has to drag at Jade's wrist to make her move.

He stands there in the fading light, as the earth rotates once more from day into night.

In the periwinkle blue he spots a tree in Cat's vast garden.

Whilst her house is small; a bungalow formed from a mismatch of rooms, all drenched in pastel paint, the rectangle of lightly yellowing grass is large, stretching back to join another stretch of ill watered grass, only a peeling white picket fence to signify a change in property. A change into, what he'll find out later, is Jade's property.

The tree stands unabashedly in the centre, a humble apple tree; blossom erupting from its fingers of green. Crossing over the grass, a dewy crush under foot, Andre finds himself in front of the tree. In amongst the explosions of spring, are a multitude of ribbons, fastened to the tree's branches.

Some are mauve, a long string of green too, and few varying shade of yellowing cream can be found, even a ribbon depicting a row of bounding dogs is present upon the tree.

The wind is absent; the tree stands still, stuck in this twilight hour, unmoving, no breath of breeze to shudder its arms. Only from his glancing touch does a ribbon sway.

'You like them?'

The small voice pipes up from the previously absent night.

'Yeah, they're cool.'

Cat steps closer, tugging lightly at a forest green strip.

'I started when I was little. The tree lost all its leaves and it made me so sad that it could no longer be beautiful. That's all you can ever want right? Deep down everyone wants it. Everyone wants to be beautiful.'

It's a rare moment of lucidity. The words flowing from Cat's mouth have some relevance to the situation and he's slightly taken a back.

'The trees not filled yet,' he notes.

Her laugh is a tinkling chime, like glass and pennies and the shine of her eyes.

'You know when you have an idea, but when you get down to making it, it never really works out?'

'Yeah.'

'Exactly.'

'I used to have them on all year round.' She pauses to select another, this time a royal blue, and unties it from the tree.

'But the tree didn't like it, he got awfully crowed and started to wilt. He's a very fashion conscious tree you know,' And suddenly Cat is back to her normal mental state. She gropes for Andre's hand in the dark and finds it, lifting up his right hand to eye-level.

'Stay still,' she warns, and continues to retell the tree's story, slowly as she wraps the royal blue ribbon around his middle finger, finishing it off with a crude knot.

'But when I was eleven I sat with him for a whole day and convinced him otherwise. So now he lets me. I'll always tie on the ribbons at the end of spring, so he isn't naked for autumn. Tehe, imagine that, a naked tree?'

'I'm trying not too,' he chuckles and her giggles join his as their laughter drifts up into the darkening sky.

She entwines her hands in his, her palm still matted with flour and sugar, and without a word, leads him, still entwined in blue, back to the house.

To her it's a simple, friendly gesture, nothing much more than the warm comfort of their skin contacting. To him it's a silent reprieve from his internal struggle to not suddenly explode and destroy everything.

.

The summer passes as a dry expanse of nothing. Months later, the only thing he'll remember is the low monotone drone of his air con, and the absence of a certain red head. She's gone to San Francisco to visit her uncle and uncle and is gone for the whole of the summer, and he guesses it's for the best. He needs to cool down and forget, forget his racing heart and hazy thoughts and learn again to breath.

It doesn't last long though, as Cat takes it upon her self to send him a postcard every other day. At the top right hand corner of each brightly marked piece of card is a different ribbon, varying in size, shape and shade; tacked, taped and stapled, just for him.

After two weeks the ribbons disappear, and she explains in a slanted pink script, that she'd brought with her all the ribbons to send him, and after running out, couldn't find anywhere to buy him new ones. A few days later, he receives a bulky envelope, and is informed that from now on he'll be receiving ill-formed dinosaurs, as she's found an abundance of plastic, prehistoric reptiles.

He lays the luridly coloured dinosaurs on the top of his piano, and watches them vibrate as he composes and sings and plays.

The summer's days draw to a close and he counts down the hours until she'll be back; August 23rd, the day before her seventeenth birthday.

He counts up twenty three dollars and seventeen cents, stuffs it in his back pocket and walks out into the midday sun, fully intending to find what he's looking for.

.

A week later, on that remarkable day, he finds her on her front lawn. The hot days have not been good to the grass, but the weather report later promises rain. The dead stems crackle underfoot as he marches up to her, with a small cardboard box, 'Little Red' unashamedly scrawled across the front.

'Happy Birthday, Little Red,' he sings as he sits down next to her, lightly passing the box to her.

'Oh my gosh! What's this?' She squeals as she shakes the poor box vigorously.

'I wouldn't shake it if I were you.'

'Why?' She suddenly turns serious 'Is it a puppy?'

He laughs at the idea and assures her that it's better than a puppy.

She opens the flimsy cube with a ferocity he's never seen before. The cardboard doesn't stand a chance against her cherry polished nails. Suddenly a side splits and the box finally slumps into an aching submission, its multicoloured innards sliding out.

She stares at the box. Seconds, minutes, full earth rotations pass before her light lips part slightly into an 'o' shape.

With her hands lightly moving, she prises open the box, displaying the full glory of his gift. Hundreds upon hundreds of multicoloured ribbons lie nestled in their cardboard container. She fingers at the ribbons, sinking her hands into the small mound.

'So your tree will never be naked. '

At that she finally breaks out into an unbridled smile, stretching from ear to ear, and he feels as though his heart is doing flips, because he made her smile like that, he did.

'Now help me tie these ribbons to my fingers?'

'Why?'

'Because they'll be safe there from all the little girls then. If they saw this many ribbons, they'd have me killed.'

'I'm very sorry my present might have endangered your life.'

She suddenly turns serious, treating the matter with wide eyes as Andre continues to tie on ribbons.

'Don't be sorry, really. I'm totally in love with this present, its cosmic.'

She hugs him in her vanilla scented embrace for a second too long and he thinks his heart might of – no definitely, stopped. She breaks away, still holding his shoulder under her ribbons clad fingers.

'You'll be my gallant knight won't you Andre? Protect me from those girls?'

'Whatever you wish, birthday girl.'

.

By the time he's on his third round of finger tying, always making sure to loosely knot them, a shadow passes over them.

Tori's figure comes into sight waving.

'Hey Cat, Happy Birthday, girl.'

Andre shifts slightly, only noticing now how their knees are touching and their shoulders are pressed tightly together and he still has her hand in his.

'Thanks Tori for the present earlier, I really love my wig!' Cat shakes ecstatically.

Andre looks at Cat with a confused stare and she explodes into an in depth story about her new pink wig. When she's finally done she looks up at Tori and asks 'So, you doing anything now?' she inquires innocently.

'I actually came to collect Andre, we're just going to practise that song he wrote for my birthday.'

'He wrote you a song?' Cat looks from Andre to Tori with a face that can't decide an emotion, and Andre immediately internally curses himself for agreeing to go.

'Yeah, it's so cool, we haven't practised it since like April though, I can sing it to you later,' Tori exclaims and Andre stands up wordlessly from the dying grass, looking down at her with pleading eyes. Cat just cocks her head and tells them she'll see them later, with those big, doe like eyes.

Tori picks up a single peach ribbon from the crumpled box and twirls it round her finger as she leads Andre away.

.

The rain finally begins, a long, heaving groan, as the sky finally lets go of its moisture, and as he watches the drops slide down Tori's window, he wonders how many people would have to cry, to create this many tears.

.

He catches her later, on his way back from Tori's, sitting on a bench. The bus shelter is providing her only cover from the falling rain and the box is still clutched tightly to her chest, a sodden mess, patched up with crude heavy-duty tape.

'You okay Little Red?' He sits beside her, and seeing her knitted brows, laces his fingers in hers.

'I wanted to be near the fox. I buried him in those bushes. You remember him?' She's crying now, hot, salty tears, which he so wants to kiss away.

'Of course, how could I forget?'

'I saw him every day on the way to school. And then bam. He's dead.' At this more tears appear. 'You don't realize how much you need something, want something, until you realize – realize it was never really yours in the first place.'

Her words hang in the air, and he wishes with every fibre of his being, that she might, in some off parallel universe, be talking about him.

With her hand still laced in his, they sit in silence, until she finally speaks.

'I don't want just ribbons for my birthday.'

'What do you want then Little Red?'

She seems to hesitate, the words are teetering on the tip of her tongue as she's decides whether or not she should take the plunge.

'I want you to stop writing songs for just her.' She whispers; her head turned away so he can only just see her profile.

'Who Tori? Sure thing, I can do that.' He gazes down at her face and sees her quivering lip. Her hands are still clutching his and the ribbons are still tied round her fingers.

'Cat - Tori doesn't own me'

'I know, but-'

'But what?'

She looks up.

'But I wish I did.'

She faces him, and with a final glancing splutter; the downpour ends.

.

.

_For me it was important not to go any further than that. To rush anything would ruin this incomprehensible mess, but I just wanted to express realization._

_I'm usually a sucker for cemented relationships, the ones that just have to happen or the world will explode. But strangely I really like the relationship between Andre and 'Little Red'. Its not like 'omgosh he calls her that because he's in lurrrve.' It's just sweet and works on a very simple perfect level._


End file.
